Impact Assessment of Morphology and Layout of Zones on Refugees’ Affordable Core Shelter Performance

Abstract

The number of migrants increases globally due to natural disasters, global warming, and war conflicts. Inefficient and unsustainable construction approaches for migrant shelters have resulted from improper planning and design systems regarding lifespan, materials and techniques, and socio-cultural aspects. Therefore, the study aim has an incentive to assess the impact of the morphological, siting, and layout of zones and shelters for the long-term displacement prototypes considering sustainability concepts from social context, affordability, adaptability, low-impact construction materials, and techniques. Furthermore, applying the dynamic simulation IDA ICE 4.8 tool was cardinal to justify the comprehensive reported outcomes based on the bottom-up construction method after assessing energy and thermal comfort performance in seven cases. The energy performance assessment regarding heating reveals the superiority of the compact layout plan system, while the open-layout plan system is superior for electric cooling assessment. Concerning thermal comfort performance for the number of accepted hours category, the open-layout plan system is superior. Fanger indicators for thermal comfort assessment demonstrated the superiority of the horizontal-compact layout plan scheme. The carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration level assessment shows that the open-yard layout cases have better results than other systems. To conclude, sustainable prototypes for displaced people should involve several aspects such as lifespan, socio-cultural and affordability, thermal performance and energy-efficient, and environmental impact. The beneficiaries from the methods and the results of this study would be firstly the Syrian refugees in the Middle East context, then various places and involved people affected by the displacement issue globally.

Architectural layout typologies for the sustainable reserve housing organization

“…In the study by R. Ibrahim et al typologies of layout schemes with plots were developed for implementation in the Middle Eastern climate using local materials [11]. The project of an ecological house for refugees in the northern climate of Sweden was developed by M. Dabaieh & J. Alwall using renewable energy sources [12].…”

Energy Use and Indoor Environment Performance in Sustainably Designed Refugee Shelters: Three Incremental Phases

“…The assessed models represent those six Cases designed and developed based on the previous studies' data presented in [41,42] (Table 1). The six Cases were designed considering several variables, which have been identified based on the observations during the site visits, conducted by the authorities, and investigating the local planning and design systems in the north of Iraq.…”

“…Data: References [41,42], Literature review, and observation. 1st Aim: To assess the impact of orientation on the energy performance of six different core shelter housing prototypes (Phase 2) with end-of-terraced (ET) positions to identify the best orientation and be adopted for the next step of the study (assessment of the incremental phases).…”

“…The analysis started by assessing the six designed cases (Cases 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7) established in a previous study [42] through eight different cardinal (S, W, N, E) and ordinal (SW, NW, NE, SE) directions to identify the best orientation and be adopted for the further step of the study (incremental phases). Afterward, regarding construction techniques, materials, and prototype parameters, scenario nine (C1S9) techniques from [41,42] have been selected for this study for affordability and adaptability reasons. Other identified parameters are shown in Table 2.…”

“…Whereas there is a gap and limitation in the literature concerning integrating all those factors, especially regarding the context of this study. Therefore, the main contribution and real novelty of this study are to fill that gap by integrating the above factors in the six refugees' core shelters prototypes which have been designed based on the Middle Eastern cultural context using locally available sustainable construction materials and techniques established in [41,42] and to be embedded in the local planning system their three incremental phases. Subsequently, the main aim of this study is to empirically evaluate the energy and indoor environment performance of the six refugees' core shelters typologies through three incremental phases with two different positions, i.e., terraced (T) and end-of-terraced (ET).…”